Brad Pitt was fighting to the sound of the Japanese version of Holding Out for a Heroa 1984 song by Bonnie Tyler popularized by the film Footloose. I thought of Son by my side, telling myself that once again, we were watching a movie (Bullet Train) “strong enough for me, but designed for him” (yes, I’m hijacking an antiperspirant advertising slogan from the 1980s).
Posted at 7:15 a.m.
I have lost count of the number of films and series that rely, 40 years later, on the nostalgia of the 1980s to appeal as much to the teenagers and young adults for whom they are immediately intended as to their parents who grew up in the era of high-waisted jeans, hoodies and white basketball shoes. Yes, I know, fashion is a spinning wheel…
The 1980s are ubiquitous in popular culture in the 2020s. In retro computer hardware from series such Loki and Severance (which makes judicious use ofAce of Spadessong from 1980 by Motörhead), as in the songs of the soundtracks of the most popular films and series of the moment.
We talked about it a lot: Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)a modest hit from 1985 by Kate Bush, became a worldwide phenomenon in May thanks to the Netflix series Stranger Thingsearning the British artist some $2 million in royalties from online listening.
A month earlier, Sweet Child O’ Mine by Guns N’ Roses (1987) also topped the charts—the magazine’s hard rock songs Billboard –, thanks to the trailer of Thor: Love and Thunder. Director Taika Waititi, who says he considered including a piece of Kate Bush in his film, drew heavily on the aesthetic of the 1980s. He chose a typeface typical of metal bands of the time for the poster of Thor: Love and Thunderas well as three GN’R songs and a piece by Enya, the Celtic new age diva.
When I learned that Master of Puppetsa nearly nine-minute Metallica thrash metal track from 1986 that topped the iTunes Rock Songs chart in July, I couldn’t believe it.
If someone had told me that during my teenage years – when I forced my parents to listen Ride the Lightning in the car to our vacation destinations between an album by Brel and another by the Beatles — I wouldn’t have believed it. I can hardly believe it today.
It is however logical. Young fans of popular shows and movies tend to embrace anything related to that decade (from new wave pop to thrash metal, it doesn’t matter, it seems). And since nostalgia is a hard drug, for the older ones, hearing by chance in a contemporary film or TV series a chorus or a riff teenage guitar playing is like a high dose of endorphins.
What incidentally provokes this marriage of today’s stories and yesterday’s music is an intergenerational communion. I had as much fun as Sonny discovering the phlegmatic Brad Pitt in Bullet Trainthough I smiled at some popular culture references (the ones that “under-20s can’t know”) that slipped his mind, and vice versa.
We necessarily rub off on each other. Without him, I wouldn’t understand all the intricacies of the plots of Marvel’s newest films. Without me… well without me, he wouldn’t be here!
I recognize in him a part of me. And not just because he has the same haircut Chris Cornell, the late singer of Soundgarden, had in 1989. March a resumption of Something in the Way in the movie The Batmanwhich we also saw together at the cinema.
I stumbled upon one of his song playlists recently, recognizing some of my favorite artists: from Bowie to Arcade Fire to The Velvet Underground to Radiohead. There was Eye of the Tigera 1982 song by the group Survivor — no doubt because we watched together the series of films by rocky —, and a cover of madworlda 1983 song by Tears for Fears, which he heard at the end of Donnie Darko.
This phenomenon is not new. I think of all the songs that I have known thanks to the films of Quentin Tarantino. Today, the almost unlimited accessibility to music, through subscriptions to digital services that cost the equivalent of a Pixies tape in 1988, makes discovering old songs much easier.
It remains to be hoped that for its next and final season, Stranger Things won’t decide to popularize again We Built This City of Starship or The Lady in Red by Chris de Burgh. I beg your pardon in advance for these terrible earworms.